ADVANCED BEE CULTURE. 117 



This plan greatly lessens the work during- the busy season, as about 

 all there is to do is to see that plenty of surplus room is provided. 

 If the harvest is prolonged, lasting several weeks, it is quite likely 

 that some of the supers will be ready to come off before the harvest 

 is over, and it may be best to remove them if they are becoming 

 piled up too high. 



It seems almost unnecessary to say that I would use a queen- 

 excluding honey board over the brood nest. If bee escapes are to be 

 used, the presence of brood in a super will defeat the plan, as the 

 bees will not desert the brood. If we are going to brush off the bees 

 and extract the honey at once, no honey that is thoroughly ripe can 

 be successfully extracted without at the same time throwing out 

 some of the unsealed brood if any is in the comb. With unusually 

 deep combs in the brood nest, it may be advisable to use shallower 

 combs in the supers, but with combs no deeper than the Langstroth, I 

 doubt the advisability of having any shallower combs for the supers. 

 In the production of extracted honey there is not much to choose 

 between an eight-frame Langstroth hive and a ten-frame one, unless 

 out-apiaries are to be established, when the ten-frame hives seem to 

 enable the bees to bear neglect, to shift for themselves, to better ad- 

 vantage. They are less likely to run short of stores. Some bee- 

 keepers use only nine combs in a ten-frame super, or seven combs 

 in an eight-frame super, thus inducing the bees to lengthen out the 

 cells and make the combs thicker. The honey ripens more slowly 

 in such deep cells, but the uncapping is thereby greatli' facilitated. 

 When the combs are uncapped, the cappings should be given a 

 thorough opportunity to drain, and, if they are kept clean, the water 

 in which they are melted when they are rendered into wax maj- be 

 made into vinegar. H. G. Sibbald, of Ontario, has the best uncap- 

 ping box that it has been my good fortune to see. It is five feet long, 

 16 inches wide, and made in two sections, each nine or ten inches 

 deep. The lower section is for honey, and, with the exception that 

 the corners are halved together, it is simply a well-nailed and neatly 

 made box, waxed inside at all joints, with a honey gate at one end to 

 draw off the honey; the legs being a little shorter at the end having 

 the gate, so that the honey will run off readily. The top half or sec- 

 tion is made in the same manner, only that, instead of a board bot- 

 tom, it has a wire screen bottom which allows the honey to drain 

 from the cappings. The bottom section is halved on the inside, 

 upper edge, and the top section halved on the outside lower edge. 

 Being made in this manner, the lower edge of the upper section fits 

 inside the lower one, and thus no honey runs down outside the 

 lower box. 



